02-27-2009, 03:38 PM
This novel is based on a real event. While revealing this event might act as a spoiler, I will do so because most people will read it on the back cover or in the intro anyway.
In 1950 the ancient Zen temple of Kinkakuji (otherwise known as the Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto burned to the ground. It was an act of sabotage by a young and troubled acolyte. The Japanese were horrified and devastated, because the temple was over 500 years old and had played a major role in many historical events.
In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mishima presents a "fictional take" on this event. Told from the point of view of a troubled acolyte, it explores his motives leading up to the act.
My feelings about this novel are mixed. You know what's going to happen in the end, so you don't read it for the big surprise. You're subjected to the thoughts of this acolyte, how he reasons his way through various situations. At times this is fascinating, because of the odd nature of some of his experiences and how he deals with them. However, this is foremost a deep excursion into Zen -- in the best and worst of ways.
A koan is presented early in the book. A lovable kitten is found at a Zen temple. Two groups at the temple fight over who gets to take care of it. A monk takes the kitten and says that the kitten will live if either side can say a word. Both sides are stupefied, and the monk cuts off the kitten's head. Later the monk relates the incident to his superior, who has just returned from a trip. "Could the kitten have been saved?" he asks. In answer, the superior takes off his shoes, places them on his head, and walks off.
The superior's answer is interpreted in various ways at different points in the book -- which is intriguing. But a little koan goes a long way, and almost everything in this novel takes on a koan aspect. If you're into Zen, this could be an important read. But for me it was at times very frustrating, because of the long, intricate -- at times impenetrable -- logic applied to the tiniest of emotions.
Here is one example, spoken by the acolyte's friend Kashiqagi, who, with two club feet, still gets the pretty girls by acting aloof and pitiful. In this passage, he relates how he could not perform the first time a pretty girl gave herself to him.
"At that moment, you see, I had felt an insincere kind of joy at the thought that by my desire -- by the satisfaction of my desire -- I would prove the impossibility of love. But my flesh had betrayed me. What I had wanted to do with my spirit, my flesh had performed in its place. And so I was faced with yet another contradiction. To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood the desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer that it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way."
This type of reasoning goes on for pages.
But at other times the Zen aspect really works, and I got into it. Also, Mishima has an amazing descriptive style. He senses things others would miss, and relates them to other things in remarkable ways. For example, at one point a girl is caught taking food to an army deserter -- which is a serious offense. Mishima describes her expression in terms of a tree stump, the rings visible. He brings out that one can only see these rings after destroying the tree, and that is what one sees on the face of this girl. The description is longer and more elegant than this, but hopefully I've given you some idea.
My only other foray into Mishima fiction was Spring Snow. I read that back in the '80s and am thinking about rereading it (can't remember it very well). Many consider it one of the greatest novels of all time. It was the first book in his monumental The Sea of Fertility tetrology. Mishima handed in the fourth and final book -- The Decay of the Angel -- to his publisher on November 25, 1970. Later that day he committed seppuku.
In 1950 the ancient Zen temple of Kinkakuji (otherwise known as the Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto burned to the ground. It was an act of sabotage by a young and troubled acolyte. The Japanese were horrified and devastated, because the temple was over 500 years old and had played a major role in many historical events.
In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mishima presents a "fictional take" on this event. Told from the point of view of a troubled acolyte, it explores his motives leading up to the act.
My feelings about this novel are mixed. You know what's going to happen in the end, so you don't read it for the big surprise. You're subjected to the thoughts of this acolyte, how he reasons his way through various situations. At times this is fascinating, because of the odd nature of some of his experiences and how he deals with them. However, this is foremost a deep excursion into Zen -- in the best and worst of ways.
A koan is presented early in the book. A lovable kitten is found at a Zen temple. Two groups at the temple fight over who gets to take care of it. A monk takes the kitten and says that the kitten will live if either side can say a word. Both sides are stupefied, and the monk cuts off the kitten's head. Later the monk relates the incident to his superior, who has just returned from a trip. "Could the kitten have been saved?" he asks. In answer, the superior takes off his shoes, places them on his head, and walks off.
The superior's answer is interpreted in various ways at different points in the book -- which is intriguing. But a little koan goes a long way, and almost everything in this novel takes on a koan aspect. If you're into Zen, this could be an important read. But for me it was at times very frustrating, because of the long, intricate -- at times impenetrable -- logic applied to the tiniest of emotions.
Here is one example, spoken by the acolyte's friend Kashiqagi, who, with two club feet, still gets the pretty girls by acting aloof and pitiful. In this passage, he relates how he could not perform the first time a pretty girl gave herself to him.
"At that moment, you see, I had felt an insincere kind of joy at the thought that by my desire -- by the satisfaction of my desire -- I would prove the impossibility of love. But my flesh had betrayed me. What I had wanted to do with my spirit, my flesh had performed in its place. And so I was faced with yet another contradiction. To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood the desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer that it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way."
This type of reasoning goes on for pages.
But at other times the Zen aspect really works, and I got into it. Also, Mishima has an amazing descriptive style. He senses things others would miss, and relates them to other things in remarkable ways. For example, at one point a girl is caught taking food to an army deserter -- which is a serious offense. Mishima describes her expression in terms of a tree stump, the rings visible. He brings out that one can only see these rings after destroying the tree, and that is what one sees on the face of this girl. The description is longer and more elegant than this, but hopefully I've given you some idea.
My only other foray into Mishima fiction was Spring Snow. I read that back in the '80s and am thinking about rereading it (can't remember it very well). Many consider it one of the greatest novels of all time. It was the first book in his monumental The Sea of Fertility tetrology. Mishima handed in the fourth and final book -- The Decay of the Angel -- to his publisher on November 25, 1970. Later that day he committed seppuku.
I'm nobody's pony.
